Today should be National Hamburger Day. Hamburgers are, as my Dad would say, the perfect food. Every Saturday for as long as I lived at home, we had hamburgers for dinner. The day was sacrosanct with beef patties, tomatoes, onions, lettuce and pickles, albeit not on a sesame seed bun. We would barbecue, grill, or fry burgers with or without cheese as the mood or the refrigerator dictated. But Saturday was the one day of the week, when Dad chose the entree.

Dad, William J. Duncan, passed away four years and five months ago. Not a day goes by that I don't shout out a good morning, or seek his wisdom or just cry on his heavenly shoulder. That's how it is supposed to be. Our loved ones are merely gone from sight, but never from our souls. They are part of who we are and hopefully the better part. I am a writer, because of my Dad. He was a reporter, coining the phrase the Underwood Man, because he loved his Underwood typewriter and cursed the computers that followed.

As a child, I was fascinated by the idea that what he wrote was dropped off by the paper boy at hundreds of households every morning. I began writing my own newspaper and would deliver it to his car in the morning before breakfast. He would chat about what had happened in the Duncan News with my Mom, as if it were the only newspaper in town worth reading.

I wrote a monthly column for a regional and local newspaper for many years. Before sending to my editor, I would have him review it. Same with every magazine article, feature story or blog post. He died on a Friday and I was on deadline for the following Wednesday. He never read that column. It took me days to hit send. It wasn't so much his approval I needed, as it was just our thing.

So today, I join my brother, Jack, for a burger lunch. We will top it off with some vanilla ice cream, also his favorite. I am passing out zwieback toast, which I made for him every year on his birthday. I hope that all those that taste it, will celebrate a man with simple tastes, an incredible wit, a heart as big as the ocean and a smile that would charm the birds from the trees. A Marine until the day he died. Semper Fi!

Happy Birthday, Dad!

For further information, click here for the life and times of Bill Duncan, a storyteller extraordinaire.